Environment II by mark andrew york

My Reporting Gig

2008-07-03T21:34:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm a full time reporter for the Livingston Enterprise, in Livingston, Montana, a long time dream of mine. I interviewed a U.S. Senator and the governor in the first week. What a country!

Happy Birthday to Me

2008-06-15T07:11:00.000-07:00

I'm 55 today, and yet still taking a college kid's summer job for the US Government. I took it, but didn't keep it. I was forced to resign because I couldn't carry a Honda gasoline generator on my back over the tops of the mountains of Central Idaho. "Good luck with that," I said.

And a happy father's day for my late dad. Two years ago he passed coming this July 22nd. He taught me you can be a regular guy and still be a big player in history as he was in WWII, and know famous people like Ernest Hemingway on equal footing. And like the prematurely late Tim Russert's dad Big Russ, my Big Russ, as he referred to himself in jest, did a crap job all his life until a heart attack got him out of it, luckily not permanantly at the time. I always said I'd rather lose the job than my health. I learned that from him. It still is a necessary policy too it seems.

I shared my story with Russert, but he didn't include it in his last book. I got a reply thanking me for reading his first book, even though I hadn't. That was nice of him at least. Dad has a room at Ft. Carson, Colorado and an award in his name for the fourth Engineers, and a spot at the Vet's History Project. Not bad recognition for a bakery worker from Waterville, Maine. We do what we can.

Tim Russert R.I.P

2008-06-13T20:48:00.000-07:00

It's as if the Sun eclipsed at high noon

Jesse Jackson on Russert's sudden passing of a heart attack at 58.

Polar Bears Gain Threatened Listing

2008-05-14T21:56:00.000-07:00

As much as it pained Secretary Kempthorne to say it, he did. Sure there were some pathetic caveats, but the basis is there legally, now. I applaud it.

Sea Ice decline

No More Salmon

2008-05-10T20:08:00.000-07:00

Some folks declare the environment is getting better, but then they aren't fish biologists. I am. Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace. In a time of dwindling fresh water in a warming world, this is a symptom. Hatchery salmon don't have the survival skills of wild runs. Like cattle, they can wander off and die easily. One thing is certain: they need water to get back to their source.

The "Authors" Keep Coming

2008-04-25T19:07:00.000-07:00

The readers run for the hills, and with good reason if the product is vanity published by any vendor. The result is always the same. 0-200 sales. A book like this stands no chance in the market. Craft and persistence still can reap a credible reward even if it's in name only. A real book, chosen by agents and publishers offers that status. In America, and beyond, this is everything.

Earth Day!

2008-04-22T19:27:00.000-07:00

Go Hillary! There's work to do since those nearby planets are either too hot or too cold with no atmosphere at all. Only this one is just right.

Presidential Science

2008-04-11T20:16:00.000-07:00

So the candidates have turned down an invitation to debate science on Charlie Rose. This is the reason Americans are so dismal and unprepared in science in general, even as we have some of the best in the business on our team. Alas, not enough.

The Society of Environmental Journalists held a conference today and each candidate had an advisor show up in their stead. I think it's time the candidates did. The voters need to hear the facts of science as understood by the three citizens who will inplement, or in the case of the current occupant in chief, hinder American progress.

Morons on the Human team

2008-04-02T20:33:00.000-07:00

This is an example of why Jim Taranto of the Wall Street Journal didn't graduate from our alma mater, CSUN.

LiveScience.com, meanwhile, reports that the climate was changing millennia before the Industrial Age: Humans may have struck the final blow that killed the woolly-mammoth, but climate change seems to have played a major part in setting up the end-game, according to a new study. . . .
Scientists have long debated what finally drove the furry beasts over the edge. Researchers led by David Nogues-Bravo of the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Spain used models of the climate, as well as models of woolly-mammoth and human populations, to study the relative importance of various factors leading to the mammals' demise. . . .
The team found that the brunt of the damage done to mammoths was due to Earth's warming weather around 8,000 to 6,000 years ago. Since Earth was coming out of a glacial period at that time, temperatures were climbing and recasting the planet's landscape, and the mammoth's preferred habitat, steppe tundra, was vastly reduced.
As far as we know, no one worried about climate change back then. They were too busy worrying about getting trampled by mammoths.

Remedial Math

Oops. Do we need to know what HE thinks is remedial?

Amazon Park

2008-04-01T20:03:00.000-07:00

Remember how the T-Rex came out of the jungle to chomp the velociraptors? From Publisher's Lunch:

Ingram on Amazon: Ingram chairman John Ingram issued a brief statement on Amazon's recent move to drive POD publishers to use Booksurge if they want their books sold directly by the e-tailer, noting "it clearly is alarming many of our publisher partners." At the same time, Ingram reports that "so far we've been unable to get a response directly from Amazon.com." He says, "We all live in a world where decisions are made about insourcing and outsourcing, and free choice is important. At Ingram Book and Lightning Source, we are going to work really hard to continue to be the compelling choice as publishers make their outsourcing decisions.... At Lightning Source, we produce a great product and thus do justice to our publishers' valuable titles. There is no question that we provide the highest print quality, the fastest turnaround speeds, and the most comprehensive portfolio of channels for a publisher's books."

Yeah, here's the deal: Ingram, Lightning Source and Baker & Taylor are the vanity print-on-demand industry from Lavergne, Tennessee. To the publishing industry in New York, this is a nano issue. Less even. To vanity authors and to crooked scam outfits like Publishamerica, and pay to publish, straight vanity presses alike, it's the kiss of death. Whatever.

Going, Going, Gone.

2008-03-28T19:01:00.000-07:00

Glaciers. Warmer is not better. It means no water, or everywhere and not a drop to drink.

On Wallace Stegner

2008-03-14T19:44:00.000-07:00

“We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.”

Amen.

Duel on Front Street

2008-03-11T19:49:00.000-07:00

Of Nome, Alaska that is. Looks like a cabin burner finish to Iditarod 2008. This is no country for old men, but former four time champ Jeff King of McKinley Park doesn't know it.

In Memoriam: four time champion Susan Butcher 1954-2006 to leukemia.

Update: Mackey won. Two in a row. Here's to ya man! No real job in the windshield, ah driving bow. That's always a cool thing.

The Balmy Iditarod 2008

2008-03-10T21:44:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of the Anchorage Daily News

Defending champion Lance Mackey of Fairbanks makes it look easy on the Iditarod trail to Nome. 40 degrees above zero helps that.

Science Debate 2008

2008-03-01T21:08:00.000-08:00

My candidate, Hillary Clinton, is the only candidate on record who has given a major science speech. It's no accident. She, John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich were the only ones at the Grist Global warming forum here in LA last fall. Only one candidate has a viable plan to combat climate change and the stifling of scientists like the country's foremost climatologist, NASA's James E. Hansen. The future is now.

Dems Debate

2008-02-21T18:46:00.001-08:00

Well, I thought Hillary kicked butt tonight! Obama strikes me as a very untested newbie. He's the easiest target for wingers to exploit as a peacenik, without a defensive leg to stand on. I maintain were it not for his ethnicity, he couldn't get the time of day. He's recent smoker, so I don't buy his health practices knowledge either. Congratulating himself for giving nice speeches is the sound of one hand patting his own back. Very tacky. The reporters and pundits are just blinkered by his mediocrity.

Coal: Half of America's Power

2008-02-21T18:29:00.000-08:00

The coal lobby is active on CNN with a series of plugs for the ecomomy of coal. They fail to mention the destruction of the atmosphere, climate and our fisheries from mercury poisoning.

Coal: It's what's Cooking our Goose!

Oh yeah and Futuregen touted by this cheerleading group, was cancelled. Texas may get a clean coal plant? Right. Applicable word is "may."

Galactic Cosmic Ray Theory: Not!

2008-02-09T20:32:00.000-08:00

Clouding the issue of climate
The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change
Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder
2007 Icon Books

NASA's Dr. Gavin Schmidt eviserates this premise in short order.

It's the CO2 Stupid!

2008-01-30T12:32:00.000-08:00

As the Green Lantern over at Slate concludes in a very nice job of explaining why water vapor is a feedback and not a forcing of climate change to the warm side:

There are many skeptical assertions worth engaging, such as the questionable efficacy of carbon offsets and the potential for our species to endure moderate warming in exchange for greater economic growth. But the water-vapor argument is designed only to mislead, taking a kernel of scientific truth and blowing it up into a risible call to inaction. And so the Lantern vows to continue blathering on about CO2.

Repeating this tired canard is a feedback loop itself: stuck on stupid.

350 ppm

2008-01-23T21:09:00.000-08:00

We are at 383 ppm of CO2 and climbing. At least we're homing in on the right number. Three hundred and fifty is the number every person needs to know. The tipping point is lowering.

Hansen's Warning

2008-01-23T18:10:00.000-08:00

Many critics of anthropogenic global warming find the new report from the IPCC too radical, but experts like James Hansen and his team at NASA have found a flaw, and that is in sea level rise predictions. They are too rosy given what we know about the instability of ice sheets found in the evidence of Earth's history.

British columnist George Monbiot found this dichotomy last summer with chilling effect.

Reading a scientific paper on the train this weekend, I found, to my amazement, that my hands were shaking. This has never happened to me before, but nor have I ever read anything like it. Published by a team led by James Hansen at Nasa, it suggests that the grim reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could be absurdly optimistic(1).

Hansen’s paper argues that the slow melting of ice sheets the panel expects doesn’t fit the data. The geological record suggests that ice at the poles does not melt in a gradual and linear fashion, but flips suddenly from one state to another. When temperatures increased to 2-3 degrees above today’s level 3.5 million years ago, sea levels rose not by 59 centimetres but by 25 metres. The ice responded immediately to changes in temperature(3).

It's a damn shame idiots like this get more readers than our smartest people. My advice is follow the former. Do it now.

And Then There Was One Little Piggy

2008-01-20T21:16:00.000-08:00

Corrupt Bush administration natural resource cronies that is. Timber lobbyist Mark Rey threatened with jail time. Quite a crew this bunch, yep. Norton, Griles, Cooney, the list of industry shills is running out faster than the time left in this Bush family debacle dog an crony show. Like sands through the hourglass so go the shills of our lives. Good riddance!

Bush League Science

2008-01-18T19:31:00.000-08:00

Now, he said, "decisions that come out of Fish and Wildlife ignore the science and fabricate evidence in the crudest, most unsophisticated way."

Now they're catching on. The list of industry lobbying lackeys dwindles as I write this. The clock is ticking. Why can't a scientist get a political appointed job? Because they'd follow the science where it leads.

A Shot Heard Round the World

2008-01-02T17:24:00.000-08:00

"The people of Massachusetts took great risk, for the sake of themselves and their progeny, when they drew a line with the British at Lexington and Concord. It is time for a line to be drawn with the powerful special interests, who reap profits from our fossil-fuel addiction."

James Hansen of NASA nails the Massachusetts Senate for giving a pass to a coal fired power plant up for relicensing. Coal is a greater theat to our environmental health than anything else. It lays waste to our air, laces our fisheries with mercury, makes the planet hotter and makes our climate more volatile and prone to catastrophic local events. Utilities must be held to task and what better place than the Lexington Common?

The World According to Exxon

2007-12-20T05:47:00.000-08:00

The decision to maintain the tax breaks was particularly shameful. Blessed by $90-a-barrel oil, the companies are rolling in profits, and there is no evidence to support the claim that they need these breaks to be able to explore for new resources. Yet the White House had the gall to argue that the breaks are necessary to protect consumers at the pump, and the Senate was craven enough to go along.

Without denying tax breaks to keep doing the same things, nothing will change and we will still be frog-marched over the cliff.